parents, retirement, role
Now, in your fourth year as a parent, you’re thinking of retiring when you’re about to burn your heart to do something with a title like a new assistant manager? Just in case, to tell you in advance, it’s not about ‘I want to quit’ but about ‘I want to do better.’
Among the things I took for granted before I became a parent, there are some facts that I feel as if I were a real parent. In my case, one of them is the irreversible nature of being a parent, that is, never going back before being a parent. And since she is almost 40, and her mother, who is about to be seventy years old, has committed an injustice that attracts her to raising her twin grandchildren, it makes me wonder if being a parent is the end or what should be considered the end.
Parenting depends on the birth and development of a child, whether I am in my 20s, 30s, or 40s. In other words, even if they are 40 years old and are about to retire at work, if a child is born now, the role of parents is just beginning. In this case, parents are afraid of social retirement due to child care problems, but what is more frightening is that there is no retirement age for parents’ roles. There is no standard of “That’s enough now.” In the workplace, I feel like I’m suddenly retiring one day (whether or not I’ve filled the retirement age), but most of them retire without even having time to plan for retirement, but many parents are preoccupied with their retirement day by day and never retire.
Whether written earlier, there is no objective standard for parenting, saying, that’s enough.” Therefore, some people think that retirement itself is impossible, depending on individual situations or parenting views. For a close example, my mother is a refusal to retire (or give up) who says like a habit, “Only when I die does the parent’s role end.” Thanks to that, I am holding out for twin care, but when I say “retirement,” I have to endure a bit of embarrassment.
What is retirement?
What state does retiring from the parent role mean? Even if you retire from your job, your post-retirement life varies widely. When I thought of retirement as a parent, the first word that came to my mind was ‘accompanion’. The first time this word settled in my head was in an interview with Lee Sung-ah, a parent education expert, when I was an editor of a parent magazine. Explaining Galinsky’s theory of six stages of parental role, she stressed that the final stage was “accompanied.”
“The last important step in the parent role is ‘companion’. Not that parents are responsible for their children to the end, but to let their children live their own lives sufficiently. It is ‘accompanies’ that both parents and children live their own lives independently and encourage each other. The final focus of the parent role, and the complete independence of the child without me, are also important roles for parents.”
At that time, it was before marriage, but the word “companion” sounded very attractive to me as the final stage of the parent’s role. And somehow I had the confidence to be a cool, independent parent one day. Now that I think about it, I can only laugh, but I used to believe that parenting works well if I work hard according to textbooks. But now that I’ve only raised a 36-month-old child, “separation” and “independence” have become hard for me to imagine.
Children without me? Me without children? If it’s because I’m young now, will it naturally separate when I’m over 20 years old? Even if you see your mother who is busy taking care of her daughter and grandchildren over 40, it doesn’t seem to be natural because it’s time. The beginning of retirement design is the decision of retirement time, and the setting of goals. And the common advice from experts is that the sooner the better. Wouldn’t it be the same with retirement from the role of parents? Setting goals, analyzing resources, and making specific plans. Maybe it’s not too soon to start now.
Parent retirement, is that possible?
One of the main themes of taking classes on middle-aged families in graduate school was about retirement, because the impact of retirement on family relationships is greater than expected. Of course, it was about social retirement, but in retrospect, there are quite a few things to consider when thinking about retirement as a parent. Assuming that one can decide to retire on its own, the retirement party chooses to retire in consideration of its own physical and psychological circumstances as well as the various circumstances of family members. Among them, the independence of children and their relationship with their spouses are typical.
If you have children who are not yet financially and psychologically independent, parents hesitate to retire from work. This would be the same when considering retirement from a parent’s role. Only when the child is ready to be independent of his or her parents will he or she comfortably retire from the parent role. But independent children are not raised overnight. She’s been taking care of me like a baby all the time, and one day, she suddenly says, “Now stand alone. I’ll retire a little bit, too,” will the child be acceptable? Will independence suddenly rise? It’s never going to be.
As mentioned earlier, Galinsky said that helping a child’s independence is an important role for parents. To put it in the textbook, he called this last step “leaving away,” but personally, the word “companion” explained by representative Lee Sung-ah seems to be more appropriate for our emotions. I think it’s a pretty good parent retirement person who helps the child’s independence and I’m also independent of the child, maintaining a certain distance from each other, cheering and looking at each other.
So what makes this possible? The role of parents continues ceaselessly until a child’s infancy, infancy, school age, adolescence, and adulthood, and it is very important that the role of parents also changes with the child’s growth. The role of parents can be seen in a total of six stages: protection, upbringing, discipline, encouragement, counseling and companionship, in short, as follows.
Protecting - providing a physically safe environment so that a child is not placed in a dangerous situation when he or she is young - helping a child grow well by satisfying his or her needs emotionally - encouraging a child to take responsibility for and set limits in a relationship of love and respect - encouraging and supporting him or her to have a sense of belonging, confidence and value - Counseling him or her to maintain a positive communication system and to help each other’s independence based on mutual respect.
It’s a very common sense story to look at, but it’s hard to do well. Now that I’ve just passed the protective stage and entered the stage of parenting and discipline, how incredibly difficult these seemingly simple roles are actually… Am I the only one who doesn’t feel better even though I worry and wander every day? To satisfy a child’s needs, my desires must be folded gently, and my heart becomes ragged while the child’s heart grows. It is also common to face my shameful loopholes while teaching a child the right way. It will come soon when you have to hide your unreliable mind and trust your child unconditionally, and how much should you press on the words of the child’s story and the desire to teach him out of the blue while listening?
After all, isn’t it possible to reach the independence of the child and me after this intense parental role? In fact, studies on retirement also show that people who are immersed in their jobs and feel a high sense of accomplishment and rewarding are more likely to have a positive experience in their post-retirement lives. Nothing will go my way while the child is growing up, and that’s natural, but if you are lucky enough to immerse yourself in your role while living as a parent, and follow a sense of accomplishment or rewarding in the process, you will be prepared to retire as a positive parent.
I plan to retire.
Retirement is voluntary!
Past studies on retirement tended to see retirement as a crisis or stress, but nowadays, people often see it as a transition that occurs in the course of their lives and pay attention to its context. Before retirement, the more natural the satisfaction is, the more important it is to prepare and decide voluntarily, not to be suddenly kicked out one day. The same would be true of the role of parents. It is better for parents to decide on their own and actively prepare for retirement, rather than becoming unnecessary (or troublesome) for their well-grown children. In order to do so, we will have to practice step by step from the child after the “breeding” stage. In the eyes of parents, everything is unstable and unreliable, so they keep taking over and nagging, but if it continues while the child’s independence grows, one day the child may recommend me to retire early.
The resources are one by one by one!
The key to retirement design is to provide resources. Social retirement is mainly focused on the economic part, but there is something more important when considering retirement as a parent. After putting down the role of a parent to some extent, I plan for the future that I want to do and with my spouse who has been a companion to my life as a parent. This requires efforts to get along well with one’s spouse even during the child care period, which is often said to worsen the marital relationship. (Maybe it’s more difficult than parenting.) Studies of retirement show that people with good relationships with their spouses are more satisfied with their post-retirement life. Because of the good relationship, even more time spent together is less negative. So even if your child is 1,000 times prettier than your husband now, you don’t have to be honest. Throughout his life, his role as a spouse will be several times longer than that of a parent. It’s hard to retire!
To love without regret!
In “Mother’s Class,” Buddhist monk Beopryun said, “Love is to be warm when you are young, to be watched when you are puberty, and love is to be cold-hearted when you are over 20 years old.” Whether the role of parents as a result of their child’s growth is level 3 or 6, or level 12, the key is, after all, in the end, “love.” Sometimes I put myself down and immerse myself in the role of parents because I love them. Helping a child stand alone by retiring from the parent role is perhaps more for the child than for me. This is also the most different from the social retirement that I choose for my hard work.
Is it too much greed if I hope that all I do as a parent is love, based on what I do as a parent, and bravely move forward to the future alone, like a phrase from poet Park No-hae’s beautiful poem “Only Three Things to Do As Parents?” It’s my first retirement plan, so I think it’ll be okay to be grand.m. grandiose.